


and I'm really, really good at it.

by junebugtwin



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Badass Toph Beifong, Child Neglect, Earthbending & Earthbenders, Gen, I ask questions about how exactly toph figured out all her cool shit, Swearing, Toph Beifong-centric, Toph Being Awesome, Worldbuilding, can you tell i love toph, otherwise known as:, toph being a baby badass, toph learning how to kick ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:08:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24153337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junebugtwin/pseuds/junebugtwin
Summary: So she’s like six when she has her ‘little incident’, as her parents have been referring to it. They panicked for about a month, didn’t let her out of the house, or out of their sight, and pestered her uncontrollably about ‘being more careful’ and ‘getting lost’ even though she’d tried to explain to them that she hadn’t gotten lost really- her goal had been to go exploring, and you couldn’t do that if you knew where you were the whole time.They hadn’t really paid attention which is good, because in retrospect, they would not have handled the part about badgermoles very well.Anyway, it was a wild experience, and it had helped water the little seed inside her- the earth bending plant inside her soul or whatever. Because Toph could sort of feel the earth now- command it a bit, even if only barely. And that was nice and all, but it hadn’t exactly been the awakening of massive power she had hoped at the time.----or, how exactly did Toph figure out her cool Earth bending Technique?
Comments: 11
Kudos: 130





	and I'm really, really good at it.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Toph Beifong and I would die for her okay! I have so many questions though, about how she went from being a rich noble kid to a pro-earthbending master who could kick literally anyone's ass? (also, I know Toph is just a little baby in this fic and she still swears like a sailor, but- listen, listen, listen- I personally think that that is a very canon addition and anyone who thinks otherwise can eat my entire ass)
> 
> Yes, this is just an excuse for me to write more about how much I love her. So what?

So she’s like six when she has her ‘little incident’, as her parents have been referring to it. They panicked for about a month, didn’t let her out of the house, or out of their sight, and pestered her uncontrollably about ‘being more careful’ and ‘getting lost’ even though she’d _tried_ to explain to them that she hadn’t gotten lost really- her goal had been to go _exploring_ , and you couldn’t do that if you knew where you were the whole time.

They hadn’t really paid attention which is good, because in retrospect, they would not have handled the part about badgermoles very well.

Anyway, it was a wild experience, and it had helped water the little seed inside her- the earth bending plant inside her soul or whatever. Because Toph could sort of feel the earth now- command it a bit, even if only barely. And that was nice and all, but it hadn’t exactly been the awakening of massive power she had hoped at the time.

For one thing, she was ten now, and was still stuck in ‘master’ Yu’s stupid beginner class for dumb babies. And to add insult to injury, she didn’t even really participate in the class- mostly she just was pushed aside to ‘mediate’ and focus on her breathing or whatever, while her hack of a sensei focused on the rest of his stupid class. Toph was clearly just there so he could keep getting that sweet, sweet Beinfong cash for practically zero effort, and the societal one-up for working with the most powerful family in the Earth nation other than the royal family.

So basically she just spent all afternoon sitting on her ass listening to a bunch of prepubescent boys go over their basic stances and trip all over each other sparring. Also master Yu’s high-pitched girly-assed stupid screeching voice. Which was great.

So the day had continued like another, with her basically just taking a nap it the corner of the courtyard, bored out of her skull. She’d gone through her entire list of things to keep her entertained, imagining what Mater Yu would sound like with as he crashed through a wall, pictured which of these boys would be the worst to marry, planed her next great escape from her homes walls, ect, ect, and was now just laying down and pretending to be dead. Hopefully one of the spirits would make her wish come true.

Anytime now. Come on Mr. Spirit.

But it was weird- with her head on the ground like this, her mind empty except for a prayer for death- the thumps of the stinking boys feet hitting the ground as they went over their repetitive movements over and over were louder than she’d ever noticed before. At first she thought nothing of it, other than to be a bit more annoyed than she already was- when she realized, she wasn’t just pissed a the snot-nosed kids in abstract- she was pissed at them _specifically_ \- as in, specifically, like, she was irritated with that one kids sloppy footwork who was a few feet down from her and to the left.

She knew where he was. Not just generally, through hearing and stuff like usual- but _exactly_. She knew where he was in reference to the other kids, because they were making just as much noise, and she knew where he was in reference to the closest wall- because the rumbling of the dirt abruptly _stopped_ there.

Heart beginning to beat a bit faster than before she sat up, suddenly aware she could _feel_ her own pulse racing from where her hands touched the dirt.

What the hell.

Toph struggled to restrain her response- she was pretty sure no one as much as glanced her way most of the time, but even these idiots might get concerned by seeing some blind girl grin manically to herself in the corner.

This was awesome. Really, _really_ , goddamn awesome.

It was a struggle to go through the rest of the day normally- take her stupid floral bath that was supposed to make her smell-not-like-sweat after her lessons, despite the fact she never did enough exercise to sweat during them- and do all her stupid lessons about how to pour tea correctly,- (even though they wouldn’t let her pour her own tea because she was _helpless_ and _blind_ and apparently an _idiot_ so she wasn’t sure what the point was there)-and how to laugh at her future husbands lame jokes, and which rich noble owned what plot of farmland ect- eat a boring ass dinner with her boring ass parents as they talked about absolutely _nothing_ and were passive aggressive at each other and completely ignored her. And then she was sent to bed at like six o’clock because her parents thought blind people couldn’t survive after dark or something, despite the fact that made no sense for like, one _really_ obvious reason- and then she was free!

Well, she had to sneak out of her room and avoid the guards surrounding her house and find an isolated corner of her yard- and that was a pain in the ass, and took forever, but then, _finally_ , she was alone.

And she began to practice.

At first it was simple- she’s slam her fist into the ground at varying strengths, and shake with amazement, as she actually _felt_ the reverberation in her bones- could picture exactly where her palm hit the dirt- how the hit affected the soil and stirred the ground- she could even sort of feel what her hand was shaped like, as the vibrations bounced around it.

Then she’d throw heavy pine cones, and track them down- trying to pinpoint their exact position based on where she initially felt their impact- it was harder than she’d thought it’d be- the stupid things would roll after they’d hit the ground, and if she wasn’t paying close enough attention she couldn’t feel the all but minuscule amount of vibrations they made when doing that- plus it took a lot of mental energy- especially when she threw a bunch at once- to try to _remember_ where she _thought_ she felt them go.

She practiced at that until her head ached with the effort and her limbs grew imprecise from staying awake for so long- before she tiredly snuck back into her bed, exhausted, but more excited than she’d been in years for what tomorrow had to bring.

* * *

Every day she worked secretly to increase her ‘mole sense’ as she fondly called it- taking long walks with her guards and listening to, and feeling their footsteps- learning to predict their movements, to understand how each of them walked differently from each other to understand that- that this third sense she was developing, was so much more kickass than she even first predicted- because it wasn’t just about how she was getting more and more accurate at telling where people were, and where they would be, or understanding her surrounds better than ever before, or feeling movements practically before they happened- though all that was pretty frickin’ great- but no, it was something more.

Because Toph was starting to _feel_ people. Not just where they were, or their weight, or the rough size of their feet- but _them_. The shape of their body, the angles of their bones- their organs, their muscles and sinew- at first she didn’t have a clue as to what she was starting to get a weird sense for- but then she’d realized, that if she can feel the basic shape of someone’s foot as it hits the ground, then the same vibrations don’t just stop when they hit skin- they move up the entire human body, going over their entire form- and more than that- bouncing in-between ligaments and bone and muscle, clearly portraying just what other people _looked_ like to a girl who’d never seen anyone in her entire life.

It was like seeing, except so much better than what those suckers had- because as far as she was aware, their stupid working eyeballs didn’t allow them to see straight _through_ flesh.

This was exciting in so many ways. Because now when the brainless fools in master Yu’s class were doing the chicken like dance they called sparring, she could actually visualize it in its full embarrassing glory. And better, she knew what they were doing _wrong_. Because she could sense her sensei’s muscles, his pose, his movements- compare it to her noodlely classmates, and pick out the flaws as easily as one might scratch their own ass.

And there were things she was starting to pick up on too- things that she didn’t quite get- because she might be able to fully sense the human body now, but that didn’t mean she knew how it worked- which she _obviously_ had to rectify.

Normally the thought of her newest plan would have her running for the hills- but she was a runaway ostrich-horse now, and she wasn’t going to stop until she metaphorically pecked somebodies eyeballs out.

So she started cozying up to some nose-picking kid- Tèbié Hé, the youngest brat from the honorable Hé family- a notable clan full of scholars and researchers. He was her age, easily fooled, and more importantly- training to be a medic.

It wasn’t exactly fun, fawning over him and girlishly giggling at his stupid jokes, acting like she thought he was smart and strong, and _oh, Tèbié won’t you walk me across this bridge_ because apparently now my legs don’t work- but it wasn’t very different from the kind of performance she’d play on her parents when she wanted something- just grosser because he was a boy and boys were gross and horrible and stupid, and she was never going to marry one if she could help it.

Anyway, he bought it like the sucker he was, and when she asked for him to basically brag about his _vast_ medical knowledge he was more than eager to comply. The thing was, he was ten, and not particularly bright- so his explanations were sloppy at best and downright falsehoods at worst- so she switched tracks- asking to go over his house, definitely _not_ so she could get a feel for the infrastructure, weak points, and guards patrolling routes so she could sneak in- but because she _looveeedd_ him, and wanted to meet his equally repulsive parents who talked like they loved the smell of their own farts.

When she managed to infiltrate his compound it was a sweet feeling, and she relished the sharp sense of wicked joy as she found the window she’d opened earlier in the day- that just so _happened_ to be in the room Tèbié always took his lessons in.

Most of the stuff she ended up learning was excruciatingly complicated- and she didn’t exactly have an academic background, but despite what her parents thought of her- she actually did have a brain somewhere in this head of hers- and if she wanted to pay attention- she _could_ \- and if she wanted to be a fucking medical genius- she _would_ goddammit.

So that was how she spent every day- working on her mole sense in the morning, and absorbing medical terminology in the afternoons. A large chunk of it wasn’t really applicable to what she wanted to learn- but what was, was infinitely helpful. She could now name most parts of the human body individually, and how they worked in tandem- and more importantly what that _meant_.

Because one stunted muscle in some kids ankle meant he would go down when his sparring partner got in a lucky shot- it meant that a boy with a messily healed fracture was slow to move that leg without even realizing it- it meant that when her mother lied she tapped her nails on the table, and played with her necklace and- and- her heart sped up, her breathing increased, she fidgeted in her seat, her muscles tensed- these were things everybody did when they lied! And some of it you could pick up just by listening- (or looking she supposed)- but some of it was internal, and that stuff- that was the stuff people couldn’t just _train_ away.

She was a walking, talking, fucking lie detector.

And things were going just swimmingly! So she decided to test her luck and actually try to like, _properly_ earth bend. She was doing it unsupervised, by herself, in the middle of the night, when no one knew where she was- so it was kinda a bad idea, and she was very ready for things to go horribly wrong. (not ready enough that she’d call it off, but y’know.)

So she motioned upwards, heels planted firmly in the dirt, ready for a long night of attempting to lift up the small rock she’d placed in front of her-

And then it lifted.

And it was. So. Fucking. Easy.

It was like lifting up a sheet of paper, or blinking or breathing- so simple anyone could do it.

But it didn’t make sense, because all the dumbasses in her class had always toiled and struggled when it was time for them to first try and actually activate their earth bending- but this was so, so, so easy!

Sure it took effort, it took determination, and stubbornness- but she had that in spades! She didn’t need to carefully wait, or research, or any of the rest of that bullshit!

Toph began to lift heavier and heavier boulders, and while incrementally harder- she discovered she could pretty much toss around anything short of a mountain.

She could dig her hand in solid rock like it was pudding- she could even, within a few attempts, turn dirt into hard stone and stone into dirt into sand- she could kinda control mud and sand, though unsteadily- but she couldn’t manage to turn mud back into dirt or dirt into mud or sand back into solid earth.

Which should have been obvious, because they were always saying it took special benders who practiced with that stuff all their lives- but the more she thought about it- what made those benders so different from the rest of them? It wasn’t like they were any less earth benders- it was just practice. Practice she could do- even if she couldn’t get it now, she’d do it _eventually_.

And for that matter- what was it that made the freaks who could lava bend do what they could do? Who said she couldn’t do that too? Who said she couldn’t bend crystal or gems or ores- weren’t they just slightly differently built rocks? Didn’t that mean she should be eventually able to bend gold and steel and marble? What about bones? Did plants intake enough earth that she could bend them too? Eventually she’d be able to sense the layout of an entire building just by touching it right? Would she be able to tell where the people were? If she could sense the muscle on someone’s body, could she find where their eyes would be and look straight into them without actually seeing? What was the difference between being able to _almost_ predict her opponent’s strikes before they happened- and _actually_ reacting before they did? Would she be untouchable?

Toph laughed to herself, covered in dirt and sweat and smiling like a loon.

Fuck _yeah_ she would be.


End file.
